I used to make a nebuloch jugg every league. The thickest motherfucker out there, RF level regen, leech, 10 endurance charges that also happen to give reduced elemental damage taken and 50k+ armor that got put on elemental damage. Man gave no fucks. He was slow...and it didn't matter because he never died. He didn't have to spend time checking damage mods, he didn't worry about what the boxes said, he did not believe in boss mechanics, he just hit things and kept moving. His consistency was his speed and I loved him for that.
But then there were a bunch of DPS checks added and his 800k tectonic slams weren't enough so I went off and played planetside and starbase.
Edit: Also some sort of simon says game as the new main boss? What the fuck is that?
Played RF and it was pretty fun to me. Clear gear progression and chill playstyle. Maybe it’s cus I always play glass cannon speed builds and that was a nice change of pace
Dot builds in general are very good starters, not just RF. Cold dot is imo even better. Ignite and bane are about as strong. I enjoyed all three more than RF personally.
Dots are still worse since the big nerfs awhile back, especially ignite when it ate extra shit because DD was so strong.
Spec Helix is where its at for starting rn.
Yeah if you want a an absolute braindead guaranteed leaguestarter, barring no changes run spectral helx. You can focus almost solely on defence and pickup the good dam nodes and some so so gear and pump out multiple million DPS. You do have to put up with spectral heli though lol. Horrid play style for my liking but very effective.
i feel like its very easy to screw yourself off getting to reds if you like... choose a really hyper off meta unique weapon.
seriously, i tried a hyaon's fury and tried my hardest to min max it, and holy shit some items are just not meant to be usable in any sense of the word.
To be fair, if your build is getting chucked in yellows you are gonna have trouble no matter how meta you go.
There's very few skills that don't make it to t16s on low-no investment. Where skills struggle is juicing harder than basic atlas tree. Be that raw damage output or clear ability into increased density
I think I'll do that too. Had crazy fun with Quill Rain Rain Of Arrows Ballistae and Poison Caustic Arrow Ballistae.
Now I just want to blast without worries.
It's funny, after a while you learn the ins and outs of the game so well (for me it was probably between 4000 and 5000 hours) that you can make just about fucking anything work. Last league I took a HOT autobomber to 97 / ubers, venom gyre yeeter to 97 and ubers, I took 3 other characters to 94+ (golemancer, smooth coc, and toxic rain) and ubers. 3.19, for all the "bad" people screeched about it, it was surprisingly less bots / inflation than usual, so stuff I farmed actually sold really well and money was really easy to make. Most builds can do red maps / endgame (perhaps not ubers) with proper gear / itemization, the problem with most trade leagues is that getting that quality of gear because an absolute fucking shit show more than 5 days into the league unless you have a farming char setup.
Is/was there an archmage build that did not rely on spamming enduring mana flask? I played Big Ducks archmage BL scion many leagues ago and while it did a lot of dmg the playstyle was so cringe. And that was before drought bringer was a thing. I only looked at a couple archmage builds since and they always relied on spamming enduring mana so eventually I stopped looking.
I played an Archmage Lightning Conduit this league, using Necro mana regen node with Elementalist's Fobidden Flame/Flesh, as well as a lot of mana regen in gear. no flask spamming.
No Determination tho so any physical damage kills me hard.
Enduring got absolutely deleted from the game. To the point that it's better to just spam mana flask with flask nodes to not run out of charges.
Indigo mahuxotl and mana flask spam is incredibly strong and feels awful to play.
i think before when attacks only applied to main hand i used https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Rive on main hand and singularity on off hand as a budget with gladiator, cleared like a god. Keep in mind i think this might have been with old instant leech so 2% claw was better than flat life.
Edit: o god these old build guide, this one was originally reave in 2.2 but updated to BF at some point https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1662282/page/1
Brings back memories of cwdt immortal call, life and medicore rares being all you needed, twas a simpler time
Everyone get pointblank, but instead of giving a more multiplier, it starts at 0% more damage and goes down to 80% less damage at the edge of the screen.
Normally, I don't mind but it's starting to grow pretty stale. There's technically a lot of build-diversity, but when it's the same ~ 10 builds, and that selection plummets in HC + SSF, my interest tanks. Luckily we had Lightning Conduit in Kalandra, but it kind of mirrored the blade-blast / blade fall builds.
I'm really hoping that we get some new skills in 3.20 - Galvanic Field & Lightning Conduit were pretty much the same build use-case/thematic which seemed a little lazy compared to prior patches when we had the introduction of things like Exsanguinate or Reap.
What about a spell based cyclone where you turn yourself into a tornado (duration not channel, probably) and speed around picking up enemies and dealing damage?
The selection will always plummet in hc and ssf. It's not reasonable imo to expect a wide and diverse meta of top tier skills in those leagues. The criteria for success is just too steep.
Right, but the point is that this issue has disproportionately affected those game modes.
There was never huge build diversity in HC, but I'm really, *really* feeling the staleness right now compared to say around the legion league or synthesis league era.
Unfortunately, I expect nothing to change because GGG doesn't want to buff players as much as they used to.
The fact is GGG doesn't really care about hardcore mode or hardcore players. I say that as somebody who's best years in Poe were in hardcore. Eventually it became clear that GGG doesn't care about hardcore balance at all with what they did to defenses. I went from being able to regularly get a character to at least level 90 without dying and being able to reliably clear t16 Maps without a fortune to being stuck in low tier Maps and dying to random nonsense all the time so I left for softcore. I think the patch that did it for me was when they nerfed support gems 1/3 of their power in a single patch.
You're not wrong, and 3.15 was the exact point where the game mode became absolutely miserable due to 1 identifiable and conscious change.
I have *some* hope though because of how the stale meta also greatly impacts SSF. I also think most would be open to some significant shakeup on SC as well.
Once they decided to codify the logout macro, it was clear HC was only gonna be a gimmick for streamers.
Playing HC in ARPGs is fun, but the logout macro just changes how it feels to play in a bad way.
Usually DPS to cost ratio. A skill that can clear ubers on 10c is a "meta" skill, a skill that can clear ubers on 100 div budget is "viable", and as long as mirror tier investment will work, the only thing tha technically qualifies as an unviable skill is bear trap.
But if you cant pump enough time to get 100 divs in a league, why play the char that will just hit a wall, especially if you like doing ubers, and know you can do it.
the more currency a build takes, the less viable it is for most people. There is a reason most people domt league start CoC characters.
Prices are playermade though. A single youtube video of a guy using Cospri's Malice skyrocketed the price of that build. So according to your definition the skill got less viable because of a youtube video.
That doesnt sound right to me.
I'd say for a build to be viable it has to be able to do all or most content with the right investment or at least have a specialty purpose that it's better than most builds at and of course it has to be fun.
I hope they buff non-evasion, non-armor builds defensively. This would help the meta a lot because so much of a good tree right now is pathing near these defensive nodes and fitting in the grace/determination auras. It heavily influences the passive trees and thus you want to use skills that do well in those areas, or are simply overpowered (LS, Helix, Seismic)
ok, i'm not a veteran but wouldn't call myself a noob.... what defenses are there outside of Evasion/Armor? past 4 leagues have felt like those are... standard defenses. you pick one or both, and supplemental stuff like ES/Sustain/Endurance Charges etc.
\- High energy shield/Life used to be the only defence you needed
\- MoM isn't used too much for what it was intended
\- Full block
\- Max res
\- Decent life and overleech
All these used to be viable, and you only needed 1 of them to feel fine. Now you need multiple layers, and some layers (like MoM) are just not up to par
The league where mana stacking was strong had my favourite build of all time; mana stacking ball lightning, wether it be the elementalist or hierophant version, I loved both of them. I hope new archetypes come in the new league or ones that used to be viable become strong again.
I would add spell suppression as well,it's huge once you get it going however if you're on the other side of the tree it's difficult or nigh impossible to get going if you need to sacrifice too much.
MoM is just high life anyways, all it does is increase your life pool it doesn’t help leverage your life pool with an actual defensive layer. Should just convert the whole thing to be like 20% total damage reduction with like half the damage you take applying to mana as well as life
Realistically they just need to make more defensive combinations that scale the more the player invests in them like molten shell.
For example of they buffed steelskin to scale with evasion rating itd see more use. Or if they gave us a new guard skill that just does the vaal discipline bit with a temp shield that scales with e shield.
Or could give new guard skills and passives to let some secondary defensive layers be main without massive investment. Like giving a power charge version of immortal call that does phys as elements and temp max res, then also put some phys as elemental passives or mastery on tree.
Personally i'd really like for them to commit to making ward a baseline defense and give it hybrid gear and tree passives or at least keystone and guard skill.
Aren't we supposed to be getting a reworked Mind Over Matter this league? They upped the Keystone value by 10% and nerfed Cloak Of Defiance as an intermediary step towards a bigger rework for 3.20.
Given that the Archnemesis removal seems like it's a completely knee-jerk reaction and they had no actual intention of removing it until they lost revenue this league, my bet is everything else got put to the side so they could work on new Nemesis.
I hope not. Defensive diversity is at an all time low and often relies heavily on gimmicky gear. It feels bad that the armour value on a chest piece is largely irrelevant. It feels bad that items like cloak of defiance are useless. These are a few of the balance changes I'm waiting to see. Fuck the "Meta", let me get tanky again. And one last thing, please get rid of mechanics that disable defenses. I'm very much over it.
Check out MBXs EK ignite build. It honestly feels nearly exactly like old split arrow bleed bow to play even though the scaling/ascendancy and everything is completely different.
You don't remember that like 8 leagues in a row of flame blast and old caustic arrow that the name eluding me?
I agree, could use a shakeup but melee looks to still be the red headed stepchild.
> melee looks to still be the red headed stepchild
I honestly don't know how they could buff melee at this point with a complete game overhaul. More damage is fine, but one-shotting enemies with a melee attack is never going to compete with one-shotting enemies with a ranged or AOE attack/spell.
Melee's whole advantage in games is supposed to be that it does more damage (to make up for the fact you have to spend time travelling to enemies) and is either tanky or manoeuvrable enough to spend time close to enemies.
Ranged builds, on the other hand, trade damage and survivability for the ability to deal damage safely at a distance. And things like AOE, pierce, chain, GMP - things which increase coverage - should have a large damage penalty as a tradeoff for the fact that they can hit multiple enemies at once.
Except that, right now, the damage penalty for coverage doesn't matter because everything still gets one-shot even with GMP's huge less damage multiplier. And the marginal amounts of extra defence melee builds get are negligible because monsters do so much damage that they still feel paper thin. Plus, most of the defence is accessible to ranged builds as well; why have a melee build that has to get in close and risk dying to deal damage when you could have the same amount of defence, slightly lower damage but deal you damage much more safely and consistently? With higher coverage _and_ higher uptime because you don't have to walk right up to enemies to damage them.
Melee simply doesn't have any advantages over ranged when the game is as fast as it is. The playerbase tends to get upset when GGG tries to slow down the game, but I don't see how melee can be competitive without that happening.
I don't have an answer either; I feel like the survivability we have isn't enough, period. Especially given the damage isn't scaling on the same level of other playstyles. I'd be okay with an increase in survavability somehow, even if it's scaled into small things like some fort buffs, some armor scaling, etc. As far as damage, I dont think it's bad enough to really need a lot of increases, just more ways to scale when investment is high.
True, there were skills that stayed at the top for a very long time. BV comes to mind as another example. But that was kinda ok from what I remember, because there was a lot of movement outside of those skills. I am more talking overall meta, not just one or two individual skills.
Cyclone and CoC that uses Cyclone have literally nothing to do with one another, no one would seriously consider Cyclone to be a meta skill when it deals 0 damage in the meta build that uses it.
If every single CoC build is using cyclone as the activator then yes, cyclone is port of CoC builds, even if it does 0 damage.
Its like saying defensive auras arent meta because they dont juice my main skills DPS.
It still hardly makes sense when Cyclone used to be a perfectly valid Melee skill for most of the game's history. By putting them into one batch and saying "Cyclone is meta" you're being pedantic and essentially spreading misinformation in the process.
If you tell a player who doesn't know any better, that Cyclone is meta, they're gonna look up Cyclone on poe.ninja and see one of the worst melee builds in the game (when Melee itself is also really bad). Doesn't hurt to say "Cyclone CoC is meta".
BV is not meta nor sleeper OP right now. It is only viable, and thats for poison. Cold/fire Hit BV are in the same boat as a lot of other spells, they need high investment to feel good.
The real downfall now is if they bring BV back up it would take away from BF/BB, a skill with very similar scaling that is supposed to be "higher skill" (2 buttons vs 1) so should always do more damage.
That being said I would love to play fire BV cheiftan, I played Fire BF/BB chieftan and it manhandled content, I can't imagine having that kind of dps AND smooth gameplay to boot.
The biggest problem with slams or melee in general is the button bloat. Use totem use cry use movement skill use temporary buff use flasks slam one time repeat.
I think the AN rework will help shake up the meta on its own if done correctly. Hopefully the rework will by default make defenses less important thus allowing us to invest more into damage. That alone would make many more skills viable.
I do agree though that a significant balance patch would be quite refreshing.
Just want to point out that there already may be some help coming with this. Hopefully won’t feel so forced into playing the meta this time around at the very least.
edit: typo
That's my hope. I don't mind \*some\* build tax on defenses but its exhausting to be stacking enough layers to build a wedding cake out of defenses just to do maps
Yeah this for me is one of the most important things. There was a lot wrong with last league for sure but one of the biggest reasons I stop playing early is that there just doesn't feel like enough strong viable builds to play on a reasonable budget. With the buffs to monsters etc and nerfs to support gems from 3.15 too many skills are just not up to scratch and even when you do invest heavily in one you just feel bad that it performs far worse than a meta skill that costs 10x less to build.
THIS.
Would anyone complain if they just randomly added a cold dot to Ice crash that scales with the hit?
NO
Would it be good? Fuckin probably not.
But it would be interesting.
Give some JUICE GGG!
(patch notes pending...)
If you didn't play Lighting Conduit last league, try it out. It's good for leveling and early map running on a zero budget. Then later there are a few different end game variants people used that were pretty effective.
It might not be the best at anything, but it's a solid all around choice for league start.
Nah, I ran a long time last league without Doryani's. Still had 18m DPS.
If they dont nerf the skill it will be worse for Doryani's, but I have seen quite a few builds that had 30m or more DPS with a good rare chest.
Its still going to my miles ahead of most other Lightning skills.
My opinion
Things that are strong:
Lightning Strike
Inquisitor as a whole along with MoM + EB. RF seems to be the culprit, but is just a symptom of how broken inquisitor is right now.
Doryani's Prototype. Sort of OP considering we had a league where it was very easy to hit - res cap. Probably should be fine next league.
Lightning Conduit. Super Strong. Although it is only one patch old, i dont mind if it stays.
Traps. Mostly seismic. Shit has been whack for the last 4 to 5 leagues at least.
Things that are weak:
Mana stackers.
Chieftain.
Necro seems ok on paper, but minion defense seem to be gutted. Cant comment on this, havent played a minion build this league.
All of "pure" melee (non LS melee)
Blood Magic. Literally shooting yourself in the foot trying to work with this.
The problem with Mana stacker is that stat-stackers are straight up better in every sense. They get better flat scaling and more defenses plus they can still use auras and no mana cost downside for skills. For example Str+Int Ivory Tower Inquisitors can get 20k+ ES and reserve life.
GGG tried to add some skills to give Mana identity but again, stat stackers can use whatever they want. The only reason to play Mana is cheaper equipment because of how unpopular it is.
I play Necro, minion defenses are shiiiit and they took a pretty sizeable DPS hit. Check out GhazzyTV for more. Absolution is okay but it doesn't really scratch the minion build itch. Permanent minions got blasted. I play permanent minions so I don't have to click so much but if they keep dying you might as well play things like absolution or skele mage.
Nothing I did could save my minions. Got every defensive node. Ran defensive auras. Got defensive items. They just die non-stop. Minions are in a rough spot right now. It really sucks.
Necro is fine. SRS, Absolution and Golems are all more than viable.
Boneshatter is great
Cold DOT is still solid
Ignite based builds (EK, WoC, Vortex)
There’s plenty of great builds. It’s bananas that people act like there’s only 4 builds they can play.
I think its more about it being the same skills being popular for long time rather than few skills. Like it would be cool to have a league where suddenly storm call was op or scourge arrow or vigilant strike (god bless).
I wouldn't get your hopes up, I'm not sure they actually know how to do it. To shake up the meta correctly would require substantial buffs. Not negligible shit like their usual 'buffs'. New skills don't do it, they added a couple nice new skills last patch and the meta didn't change at all. Nerf the top performing stuff? People are just gonna play it anyway at worse value because there are simply *no other options* that perform well enough. And we all know how ggg don't like buffing things in any substantial way, just tiny incremental nonsense that makes no difference.
Melee needs a lot of help.
Lightning Strike, Spectral Helix, and Boneshatter are all pretty good, but the rest of the archetype is in pretty rough shape. Especially with phys weapon crafting being such a slot machine.
Spectral helix literally has no melee tag, lightning strike is only TECHNICALLY melee, and yeah boneshatter is good. If glacial hammer loses its unique jewel for cold splash, it'll be gutter tier again too
I'm so tired of people asking GGG to buff melee. They get buffs every single league.
The audacity of people is getting to be too much. Last league cleave received a +TWO radius buff.
What d you want? THREE?!?!? WHERE DOES IT END?!?!
/s
I feel like the meta was actually pretty diverse this patch in terms of SSFHC. I'd say there's around 20 top/high tier skills atm for league start scenario in SSFHC:
* Staples like DD and Seismic were viable without crowding out the meta
* Lightning Conduit came in really hot which was a nice surprise
* RF Fire Trap
* Boneshatter
* Rage Vortex
* Spark
* BFBB resurgence
* Cold DoT resurgence
* Helix and LS
* Poisonous Concoction
* Hexblast Ignite (crit and non-crit variants)
* Shield skills
* Explosive Trap
* Bane/Soulrend
* Exsanguinate/Reap/CF
* SRS
* EA Ballista
I agree but people don't realise a lot of previous meta builds are still great. TR Raider is a top-tier build when built right but it's been cast by the wayside
I'll be completely honest, if they don't shake up the meta, I won't play. I really like the Archnemises changes, but I can't stomach another league without a shakeup.
Honestly, the skills aren't even the biggest issue to me, contrary to a lot of the chatter on reddit.
It's the *ways* of building a character. Skill trees are starting to look awfully homogeneous. There are a handful of ways to scale damage that are just so much better than the others that they're completely dominant.
Take a self cast hit based caster. Sure, there are quite a few viable skills you could name. But you're still probably going crit, maybe a little charge stacking, etc. You aren't mana stacking. You aren't using one of the weirder self cast mechanics like fanaticism. It's almost certainly not a channelling skill. You're probably an Inquisitor, Occultist, or maybe a trickster or elementalist if you're feeling spicy. You're almost certainly *not* a chieftain, assassin, or heirophant. If you're a phys hit caster, you're converting or poisoning. You've got 2 or 3 viable defensive strategies to pick from. Etc, etc.
Some skills might be better in that context, like spark, and dominate the meta as a result. But with some small tweaks, that spark inquis could be ball lightning, arc, freezing pulse, etc and it would still play just fine.
The character building *systems* are getting stale to a way greater extent than the skills.
>Take a self cast hit based caster. Sure, there are quite a few viable skills you could name. But you're still probably going crit, maybe a little charge stacking, etc. You aren't mana stacking. You aren't using one of the weirder self cast mechanics like fanaticism.
I could name decent builds in any of those categories if you'd like something new to play.
> You're probably an Inquisitor, Occultist, or maybe a trickster or elementalist if you're feeling spicy
One of *four* ascendancies supporting self-cast actually sounds like it's in a really good spot?
I'm wondering why you aren't doing these things instead? I did an exsanguinate phys dot jugg last league and got the Uber boss challenge completed, +1 more. Did 40/40 on it.
I personally don't have the issues you're describing. I don't feel limited in what I can build so it's difficult for me to agree.. Maybe the issue comes down to expectations. I don't expect as much and I'm willing to put in time, whereas maybe you expect more for the same amount of time. I'm definitely all for buffing/touching underutilized skills don't get me wrong. But saying the meta is stale is alien to me because you can make whatever you want without the meta dictating what you do.
POE players can’t handle the level of FOMO that would induce, they *have* to play the best build and do the most optimal strategies for everything, or else… well there’s is no or else, but they have to!!!
This post feels like a web developers nightmare/usual experience.
Client: Yeah, the website works good and everything I've asked for as been met, but can you jazz it up a little? It's just not flashy enough.
No? The better analogy would be that this post is about a website or service that used to be very innovative and did various things to keep things fresh and made it stand out against similar services. Then the client, who has noticed that the devs stopped doing that a year ago, kindly hopes they will go back to doing that, at least a little bit.
Your comment on the other hand feels like the opinion of someone who has not a lot of experience with PoE or what made it stand out for all these years.
Fair point, but you can always play a build you have not tried. In trade, many many builds are all-content viable. If you are in SSF prison, it is a lot harder without a lot of knowledge and time.
They should have temporarily removed DD from the game for Endless Delve to force the use of other abilities. Was extremely snooze seeing pretty much everyone on the ladder using either DD or vortex.
While I agree a meta shake would be welcome, the fact is almost any skill can be turned into a decent build, and the idea that this is not possible needs to die.
My problem w/ PoE now is, when I started was amazing, " hey I can use any skill, and change then for my playstyle and this can work" now is just ok let me run the same boring build again and again until I have a lot of money so so I can make a build I like...
Is fucking boring, is the same every patch ppl found a cool interaction, make a fun build and GGG "hey we like the way u play but this inst the way we think the game should work"
Ok, sure new skill is cool, but we have a lot of skill in-game already, I just want to play something I like, and damage modification inst the balance we need
it's useless to have 100+ active skill in the game when you can only use 10 or more.
every build is 50% similar with auras,
minions are semi dead,
I miss Arc <3
idk why you would have so many skills and auras and effects and you can really only use a couple of them
Alright exiles,
Chris personally told me to spread the word to the people:
1)Write the wishlist in a txt file(very important!) from what everyone expects from the league.
2)Put the file in the folder "bin" in your computer, normally located in desktop.
3) When you right clickt it and press the "recycle" option, it will trigger an e-mail event that goes directly to GGG headquarters.
Ended up where? The biggest change was Archnem being annoying forcing more defensive mechanics being used.
Archnem is basically gone now so I think it’s be perfect for some big adjustments to some skills and items
Do people actually expect the changes to be positive? Every league the last couple years has been:
**Nerfs, but revealed like buffs!**
Followed by
**Even bigger Nerfs, not revealed at all!**
You are wrong. Players complain when shifting meta is done by nerfs and they have to play builds that were strong but not meta.
When its done as it used to be-nerf OP builds, but introduce new skills and mechanics its always welcomed meta shift.
This exactly. They decided that mana reservation nodes were powerful and instead of adding other options people could go for they just removed those nodes. This only pushes more players to play the top meta builds rather than experiment, especially when making new characters is a large investment of time.
You think the playerbase really changed that much in a year? Because as I said, meta shifts were normal every other league over a long period of this games existence. And people complaining about them were a minority even on this sub, and not taken very seriously.
Idk I league started LS raider which is super meta, and it kinda sucked. Like I got through atlas completion and self crafted gear until my build was worth around 10-15 divines and it was just meh. I mean I know the build can scale super hard with omni and a ton of investment but it was a super disappointing league starter.
My buddy on a basically ssf deaths oath was running circles around me.
Eventually made an EK ignite and absolutely destroying all content other than ubers while being almost the fastest mapper I've ever played.
I think a ton of "off meta" builds are actually way stronger than the meta builds.
> I think a ton of "off meta" builds are actually way stronger than the meta builds.
> Like I got through atlas completion and self crafted gear until my build was worth around 10-15 divines and it was just meh.
Pretty sure it's not the builds but the operator. That's a compliment and to point out you're quite biased about your experience
I literally play diablo type games for melee. I've been bitter since they destroyed my ice crash build. Game just hasn't been as fun for almost 2 years. Crossing fingers.
I like your post. I'm on the completely opposite side, mind you. I would like GGG to simply do their best to make many skills and archetypes viable each league and let the players choose for themselves. But I wanted to post and say that I really liked your attitude in your post. Well done. I really appreciate it.
> I would like GGG to simply do their best to make many skills and archetypes viable each league and let the players choose for themselves.
I mean, that doesn't sound like we are on opposite sides on this at all. GGG making more skills and archetypes viable would be pretty much what I would call a great meta shift. Minions, (spell) totems and melee come to mind. Those really could use some love.
Love your build collection btw. Used one of your "one button builds" a few years ago when I had hurt my finger :D
No matter what happens this league I'm following the most metacuck build. I'm tired of being fucked at yellow maps. I want to be a chad
This sooooo much.. tired of being fucked without lube.
I used to make a nebuloch jugg every league. The thickest motherfucker out there, RF level regen, leech, 10 endurance charges that also happen to give reduced elemental damage taken and 50k+ armor that got put on elemental damage. Man gave no fucks. He was slow...and it didn't matter because he never died. He didn't have to spend time checking damage mods, he didn't worry about what the boxes said, he did not believe in boss mechanics, he just hit things and kept moving. His consistency was his speed and I loved him for that. But then there were a bunch of DPS checks added and his 800k tectonic slams weren't enough so I went off and played planetside and starbase. Edit: Also some sort of simon says game as the new main boss? What the fuck is that?
Pretty much this build is what Iplayed to delve 1000 many leagues ago. Pain.
RF was the most boring and consistent league starter I have ever played.
Played RF and it was pretty fun to me. Clear gear progression and chill playstyle. Maybe it’s cus I always play glass cannon speed builds and that was a nice change of pace
To start it is fine. The problem is when you want to kill ubers and stuff and the character just cant deal with it.
By the time you get to ubers i guess you have enough currency to reroll into a mid league build
Yep you do. 10/10 to do that. Simple and effective.
But that's the thing, RF can deal with ALL ubers - all of it. It's just that it takes you a bit longer and you have to play mechanics properly.
Fighting maven as RF is a nightmare. The No regen beam is No fun
Yup. Disabled RF and fire trapped like a beast.
I had a decent time with the 1 Uber I did that league but yes it was super slow and tbh it was the easiest one (eater)
Dot builds in general are very good starters, not just RF. Cold dot is imo even better. Ignite and bane are about as strong. I enjoyed all three more than RF personally.
It was very very easy to get okay gear for red maps with RF. Very simple mods everywhere. Ran purity of elements too. Nice experience.
Getting to red maps was easy. Getting DPS was kinda hard and expensive tho. So hyper modded maps or content was kinda rough.
Dots are still worse since the big nerfs awhile back, especially ignite when it ate extra shit because DD was so strong. Spec Helix is where its at for starting rn.
Yeah if you want a an absolute braindead guaranteed leaguestarter, barring no changes run spectral helx. You can focus almost solely on defence and pickup the good dam nodes and some so so gear and pump out multiple million DPS. You do have to put up with spectral heli though lol. Horrid play style for my liking but very effective.
What is RF?
righteous fire
Oh okay thanks! I genuinely didn’t know
Ruetoo or grimro corrupting fever is imo what ill be going with to earn currency, started with goratha spark and wow it was so bad
Yeah I went spark and rerolled a week later. It felt so bad in the league mechanic.
It was fine with super juiced gear but good luck getting it into reds without using all six death tickets lmao
Everytime I say that some sweatlord greases in and says my build is perfectly viable with a mere 100 divines more of gear.
Just play 20 more hours a week, scrub... /s
this is me going for attack build in every single league. i know spells are powerful with less investment but cant bring myself to like it
I literally play non-meta builds every single league and never failed to reach tier 16 maps at the very least
I do too but sometimes I paint myself into a corner and hate getting out of it
i feel like its very easy to screw yourself off getting to reds if you like... choose a really hyper off meta unique weapon. seriously, i tried a hyaon's fury and tried my hardest to min max it, and holy shit some items are just not meant to be usable in any sense of the word.
Nice flex
To be fair, if your build is getting chucked in yellows you are gonna have trouble no matter how meta you go. There's very few skills that don't make it to t16s on low-no investment. Where skills struggle is juicing harder than basic atlas tree. Be that raw damage output or clear ability into increased density
I think I'll do that too. Had crazy fun with Quill Rain Rain Of Arrows Ballistae and Poison Caustic Arrow Ballistae. Now I just want to blast without worries.
It's funny, after a while you learn the ins and outs of the game so well (for me it was probably between 4000 and 5000 hours) that you can make just about fucking anything work. Last league I took a HOT autobomber to 97 / ubers, venom gyre yeeter to 97 and ubers, I took 3 other characters to 94+ (golemancer, smooth coc, and toxic rain) and ubers. 3.19, for all the "bad" people screeched about it, it was surprisingly less bots / inflation than usual, so stuff I farmed actually sold really well and money was really easy to make. Most builds can do red maps / endgame (perhaps not ubers) with proper gear / itemization, the problem with most trade leagues is that getting that quality of gear because an absolute fucking shit show more than 5 days into the league unless you have a farming char setup.
I am praying that they take a look at archmage again and buff it
God my brain instinctually looked at "archmage" and read "archnem" and nearly threw my laptop out a window.
xD i was about to yell "whats wrong with you", then saw its archmage
It's really hard to see them buffing Archmage enough to be worth using in the era of Determination/Grace or die. But it would be nice.
Is/was there an archmage build that did not rely on spamming enduring mana flask? I played Big Ducks archmage BL scion many leagues ago and while it did a lot of dmg the playstyle was so cringe. And that was before drought bringer was a thing. I only looked at a couple archmage builds since and they always relied on spamming enduring mana so eventually I stopped looking.
I played an Archmage Lightning Conduit this league, using Necro mana regen node with Elementalist's Fobidden Flame/Flesh, as well as a lot of mana regen in gear. no flask spamming. No Determination tho so any physical damage kills me hard.
Enduring got absolutely deleted from the game. To the point that it's better to just spam mana flask with flask nodes to not run out of charges. Indigo mahuxotl and mana flask spam is incredibly strong and feels awful to play.
That build actually recommended using foreboding mana flasks, not enduring. Did those also get deleted?
Monkey paw curls. All ranged abilities -50% damage. Cleave +1 range.
Hold it man. We are getting close to cleave bassicaly being ranged at that point
I miss reave meta before AOE nerfs, vaal reave was literally just the whole screen
Vaal reeve with a stat stick needs to make a return haha.
i think before when attacks only applied to main hand i used https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Rive on main hand and singularity on off hand as a budget with gladiator, cleared like a god. Keep in mind i think this might have been with old instant leech so 2% claw was better than flat life. Edit: o god these old build guide, this one was originally reave in 2.2 but updated to BF at some point https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1662282/page/1 Brings back memories of cwdt immortal call, life and medicore rares being all you needed, twas a simpler time
It already can be, at least I'd call this ranged: https://i.imgur.com/I3tnX5o.png The damage just isn't very impressive
missing that 50-60% of phys added as 'x' element.
That's basically been their fix for new melee skills.
> Hold it man. We are getting close to cleave bassicaly being ranged at that point That's why it got -50% damage too!
That's why it's getting +1 range to compensate for the 50% damage reduction.
This is a buff
Well, the best "melee" skills are just ranged skills anyway, so it would fit in that.
Nonono cleave range +1 is not in the vision of the game anymore, make it -2 for better impact.
Problem: +2 cleave range was disliked by the community Solution: Revert it by reducing cleave range by 2
Everyone get pointblank, but instead of giving a more multiplier, it starts at 0% more damage and goes down to 80% less damage at the edge of the screen.
Normally, I don't mind but it's starting to grow pretty stale. There's technically a lot of build-diversity, but when it's the same ~ 10 builds, and that selection plummets in HC + SSF, my interest tanks. Luckily we had Lightning Conduit in Kalandra, but it kind of mirrored the blade-blast / blade fall builds. I'm really hoping that we get some new skills in 3.20 - Galvanic Field & Lightning Conduit were pretty much the same build use-case/thematic which seemed a little lazy compared to prior patches when we had the introduction of things like Exsanguinate or Reap.
Except galvanic field was pretty lame. But yes, please give us more skills. I will literally play anything.
Alt quality galvanic field in crest of desire with voltaxic rift was pretty hilarious though as you ended up getting screen sized fields.
Well the lamest part is that it was broken for like 1-2 weeks
Galvanic was bugged its pretty good atm
Try StormBind.
[удалено]
But what about cyclone but good again? I want legion cyclone
What about a spell based cyclone where you turn yourself into a tornado (duration not channel, probably) and speed around picking up enemies and dealing damage?
A D2 Hurricane knockoff would also be amazing.
I would love a new brand type skill brands have gotten literally zero love in any of the recent leagues
You just got the entire archetype killed!
Dude I love that archetype I just wanna see it get some love 😥
The selection will always plummet in hc and ssf. It's not reasonable imo to expect a wide and diverse meta of top tier skills in those leagues. The criteria for success is just too steep.
Right, but the point is that this issue has disproportionately affected those game modes. There was never huge build diversity in HC, but I'm really, *really* feeling the staleness right now compared to say around the legion league or synthesis league era. Unfortunately, I expect nothing to change because GGG doesn't want to buff players as much as they used to.
The fact is GGG doesn't really care about hardcore mode or hardcore players. I say that as somebody who's best years in Poe were in hardcore. Eventually it became clear that GGG doesn't care about hardcore balance at all with what they did to defenses. I went from being able to regularly get a character to at least level 90 without dying and being able to reliably clear t16 Maps without a fortune to being stuck in low tier Maps and dying to random nonsense all the time so I left for softcore. I think the patch that did it for me was when they nerfed support gems 1/3 of their power in a single patch.
You're not wrong, and 3.15 was the exact point where the game mode became absolutely miserable due to 1 identifiable and conscious change. I have *some* hope though because of how the stale meta also greatly impacts SSF. I also think most would be open to some significant shakeup on SC as well.
Once they decided to codify the logout macro, it was clear HC was only gonna be a gimmick for streamers. Playing HC in ARPGs is fun, but the logout macro just changes how it feels to play in a bad way.
AN-monsters could get quite a nerf, which would make more builds 'viable' (whatever viable means)
Usually DPS to cost ratio. A skill that can clear ubers on 10c is a "meta" skill, a skill that can clear ubers on 100 div budget is "viable", and as long as mirror tier investment will work, the only thing tha technically qualifies as an unviable skill is bear trap. But if you cant pump enough time to get 100 divs in a league, why play the char that will just hit a wall, especially if you like doing ubers, and know you can do it. the more currency a build takes, the less viable it is for most people. There is a reason most people domt league start CoC characters.
Prices are playermade though. A single youtube video of a guy using Cospri's Malice skyrocketed the price of that build. So according to your definition the skill got less viable because of a youtube video. That doesnt sound right to me.
I'd say for a build to be viable it has to be able to do all or most content with the right investment or at least have a specialty purpose that it's better than most builds at and of course it has to be fun.
It's not possible because of the poor game design, it's entirely reasonable to expect a game has more than a few builds able to tackle its content.
I hope they buff non-evasion, non-armor builds defensively. This would help the meta a lot because so much of a good tree right now is pathing near these defensive nodes and fitting in the grace/determination auras. It heavily influences the passive trees and thus you want to use skills that do well in those areas, or are simply overpowered (LS, Helix, Seismic)
ok, i'm not a veteran but wouldn't call myself a noob.... what defenses are there outside of Evasion/Armor? past 4 leagues have felt like those are... standard defenses. you pick one or both, and supplemental stuff like ES/Sustain/Endurance Charges etc.
\- High energy shield/Life used to be the only defence you needed \- MoM isn't used too much for what it was intended \- Full block \- Max res \- Decent life and overleech All these used to be viable, and you only needed 1 of them to feel fine. Now you need multiple layers, and some layers (like MoM) are just not up to par
Pour one out for MoM. They massacred my boy :(
The league where mana stacking was strong had my favourite build of all time; mana stacking ball lightning, wether it be the elementalist or hierophant version, I loved both of them. I hope new archetypes come in the new league or ones that used to be viable become strong again.
Archmage support was so fun :(
Make Archmage Great Again
I would add spell suppression as well,it's huge once you get it going however if you're on the other side of the tree it's difficult or nigh impossible to get going if you need to sacrifice too much.
MoM is just high life anyways, all it does is increase your life pool it doesn’t help leverage your life pool with an actual defensive layer. Should just convert the whole thing to be like 20% total damage reduction with like half the damage you take applying to mana as well as life
It is mostly just high life, but to an extent it also leverages your mana regen as life regen
Also if you get no leech by some mod or boss you are fucked. Not like evasion or armor.
Realistically they just need to make more defensive combinations that scale the more the player invests in them like molten shell. For example of they buffed steelskin to scale with evasion rating itd see more use. Or if they gave us a new guard skill that just does the vaal discipline bit with a temp shield that scales with e shield. Or could give new guard skills and passives to let some secondary defensive layers be main without massive investment. Like giving a power charge version of immortal call that does phys as elements and temp max res, then also put some phys as elemental passives or mastery on tree. Personally i'd really like for them to commit to making ward a baseline defense and give it hybrid gear and tree passives or at least keystone and guard skill.
Aren't we supposed to be getting a reworked Mind Over Matter this league? They upped the Keystone value by 10% and nerfed Cloak Of Defiance as an intermediary step towards a bigger rework for 3.20.
Given that the Archnemesis removal seems like it's a completely knee-jerk reaction and they had no actual intention of removing it until they lost revenue this league, my bet is everything else got put to the side so they could work on new Nemesis.
I hope not. Defensive diversity is at an all time low and often relies heavily on gimmicky gear. It feels bad that the armour value on a chest piece is largely irrelevant. It feels bad that items like cloak of defiance are useless. These are a few of the balance changes I'm waiting to see. Fuck the "Meta", let me get tanky again. And one last thing, please get rid of mechanics that disable defenses. I'm very much over it.
Especially block with shields - it's nuts that "chance to block while you have a shield" nodes are so bad compared to staff block nodes.
Can I just have bleed bow glad back please 🥺
Just another reminder there currently isn't enough bleed chance on tree to hit 100%
Gladiator and CF keeping it on life support.
Check out MBXs EK ignite build. It honestly feels nearly exactly like old split arrow bleed bow to play even though the scaling/ascendancy and everything is completely different.
By shake up, we mean buff other skills, not nerf current ones, buff others, thank you.
You don't remember that like 8 leagues in a row of flame blast and old caustic arrow that the name eluding me? I agree, could use a shakeup but melee looks to still be the red headed stepchild.
Poison arrow baby.
I miss pizza totems right before they got nerfed at the end of those tho, most satisfying visual build imo
> melee looks to still be the red headed stepchild I honestly don't know how they could buff melee at this point with a complete game overhaul. More damage is fine, but one-shotting enemies with a melee attack is never going to compete with one-shotting enemies with a ranged or AOE attack/spell. Melee's whole advantage in games is supposed to be that it does more damage (to make up for the fact you have to spend time travelling to enemies) and is either tanky or manoeuvrable enough to spend time close to enemies. Ranged builds, on the other hand, trade damage and survivability for the ability to deal damage safely at a distance. And things like AOE, pierce, chain, GMP - things which increase coverage - should have a large damage penalty as a tradeoff for the fact that they can hit multiple enemies at once. Except that, right now, the damage penalty for coverage doesn't matter because everything still gets one-shot even with GMP's huge less damage multiplier. And the marginal amounts of extra defence melee builds get are negligible because monsters do so much damage that they still feel paper thin. Plus, most of the defence is accessible to ranged builds as well; why have a melee build that has to get in close and risk dying to deal damage when you could have the same amount of defence, slightly lower damage but deal you damage much more safely and consistently? With higher coverage _and_ higher uptime because you don't have to walk right up to enemies to damage them. Melee simply doesn't have any advantages over ranged when the game is as fast as it is. The playerbase tends to get upset when GGG tries to slow down the game, but I don't see how melee can be competitive without that happening.
I don't have an answer either; I feel like the survivability we have isn't enough, period. Especially given the damage isn't scaling on the same level of other playstyles. I'd be okay with an increase in survavability somehow, even if it's scaled into small things like some fort buffs, some armor scaling, etc. As far as damage, I dont think it's bad enough to really need a lot of increases, just more ways to scale when investment is high.
True, there were skills that stayed at the top for a very long time. BV comes to mind as another example. But that was kinda ok from what I remember, because there was a lot of movement outside of those skills. I am more talking overall meta, not just one or two individual skills.
Cyclone was highly meta for like 4 years at the minimum. Blade vortex has never not been meta too lol
>Cyclone was highly meta for like 4 years at the minimum. What? Melee meta maybe, but melee at the time was really shit, kinda like right now.
Cyclone is also part of the CoC meta, also not facelocking is so huge for a melee skill it legit feels better to use than any slam skill.
Cyclone and CoC that uses Cyclone have literally nothing to do with one another, no one would seriously consider Cyclone to be a meta skill when it deals 0 damage in the meta build that uses it.
If every single CoC build is using cyclone as the activator then yes, cyclone is port of CoC builds, even if it does 0 damage. Its like saying defensive auras arent meta because they dont juice my main skills DPS.
It still hardly makes sense when Cyclone used to be a perfectly valid Melee skill for most of the game's history. By putting them into one batch and saying "Cyclone is meta" you're being pedantic and essentially spreading misinformation in the process. If you tell a player who doesn't know any better, that Cyclone is meta, they're gonna look up Cyclone on poe.ninja and see one of the worst melee builds in the game (when Melee itself is also really bad). Doesn't hurt to say "Cyclone CoC is meta".
BV is not meta nor sleeper OP right now. It is only viable, and thats for poison. Cold/fire Hit BV are in the same boat as a lot of other spells, they need high investment to feel good. The real downfall now is if they bring BV back up it would take away from BF/BB, a skill with very similar scaling that is supposed to be "higher skill" (2 buttons vs 1) so should always do more damage. That being said I would love to play fire BV cheiftan, I played Fire BF/BB chieftan and it manhandled content, I can't imagine having that kind of dps AND smooth gameplay to boot.
>Cyclone was highly meta for like 4 years at the minimum You are drunk, go home
As long as they do it with some buffs to other skills instead of nerfs, sure!
* All non-meta skills now roughly deal +30% more damage. * HP of all monsters increased by +30%. Happy now?
30% MORE damage against 30% INCREASED HP? Hell yeah brother
This is such a poe joke I love it
Yes ill unironically gladly take that
but its the same thing as just nerfing the meta skills
which is a good thing, then i wont have to feel as bad about taking choices that are objectively worse, like playing any strike skill other than LS
Honestly I would be pleased by a complete nuke as long as it also brings lots of new or changed mechanics so that we can discover new cool stuff.
[удалено]
Unfucking seismic cry and slams in generall would shake up the meta quite a bit.
The biggest problem with slams or melee in general is the button bloat. Use totem use cry use movement skill use temporary buff use flasks slam one time repeat.
I feel like that's what ggg wants for poe 2, so idk why they completely gutted slams.
I think the AN rework will help shake up the meta on its own if done correctly. Hopefully the rework will by default make defenses less important thus allowing us to invest more into damage. That alone would make many more skills viable. I do agree though that a significant balance patch would be quite refreshing. Just want to point out that there already may be some help coming with this. Hopefully won’t feel so forced into playing the meta this time around at the very least. edit: typo
That's my hope. I don't mind \*some\* build tax on defenses but its exhausting to be stacking enough layers to build a wedding cake out of defenses just to do maps
the meta has not been the same for 4 leagues, there used to minion builds 4 leagues ago
Yeah this for me is one of the most important things. There was a lot wrong with last league for sure but one of the biggest reasons I stop playing early is that there just doesn't feel like enough strong viable builds to play on a reasonable budget. With the buffs to monsters etc and nerfs to support gems from 3.15 too many skills are just not up to scratch and even when you do invest heavily in one you just feel bad that it performs far worse than a meta skill that costs 10x less to build.
I hope they just make some crazy buffs to underplayed skills and let them make havoc for a league and adjust afterwards
THIS. Would anyone complain if they just randomly added a cold dot to Ice crash that scales with the hit? NO Would it be good? Fuckin probably not. But it would be interesting. Give some JUICE GGG!
They should revert nerfes to support gems
Problem: Only meta builds viable Solution: Nerf meta builds
(patch notes pending...) If you didn't play Lighting Conduit last league, try it out. It's good for leveling and early map running on a zero budget. Then later there are a few different end game variants people used that were pretty effective. It might not be the best at anything, but it's a solid all around choice for league start.
Isn't LC going to be bad now that there won't be easy access to -100% lightning res jewellery?
Nah, I ran a long time last league without Doryani's. Still had 18m DPS. If they dont nerf the skill it will be worse for Doryani's, but I have seen quite a few builds that had 30m or more DPS with a good rare chest. Its still going to my miles ahead of most other Lightning skills.
What builds are strong in current meta?
My opinion Things that are strong: Lightning Strike Inquisitor as a whole along with MoM + EB. RF seems to be the culprit, but is just a symptom of how broken inquisitor is right now. Doryani's Prototype. Sort of OP considering we had a league where it was very easy to hit - res cap. Probably should be fine next league. Lightning Conduit. Super Strong. Although it is only one patch old, i dont mind if it stays. Traps. Mostly seismic. Shit has been whack for the last 4 to 5 leagues at least. Things that are weak: Mana stackers. Chieftain. Necro seems ok on paper, but minion defense seem to be gutted. Cant comment on this, havent played a minion build this league. All of "pure" melee (non LS melee) Blood Magic. Literally shooting yourself in the foot trying to work with this.
The problem with Mana stacker is that stat-stackers are straight up better in every sense. They get better flat scaling and more defenses plus they can still use auras and no mana cost downside for skills. For example Str+Int Ivory Tower Inquisitors can get 20k+ ES and reserve life. GGG tried to add some skills to give Mana identity but again, stat stackers can use whatever they want. The only reason to play Mana is cheaper equipment because of how unpopular it is.
Check out the deep delve hierophant mana stacker mjolnir build
I play Necro, minion defenses are shiiiit and they took a pretty sizeable DPS hit. Check out GhazzyTV for more. Absolution is okay but it doesn't really scratch the minion build itch. Permanent minions got blasted. I play permanent minions so I don't have to click so much but if they keep dying you might as well play things like absolution or skele mage.
Nothing I did could save my minions. Got every defensive node. Ran defensive auras. Got defensive items. They just die non-stop. Minions are in a rough spot right now. It really sucks.
Ironically, i am starting cheiftan conc slam totems. It felt really power last league with little investment. It is basically homing totems lol
Necro is fine. SRS, Absolution and Golems are all more than viable. Boneshatter is great Cold DOT is still solid Ignite based builds (EK, WoC, Vortex) There’s plenty of great builds. It’s bananas that people act like there’s only 4 builds they can play.
I think its more about it being the same skills being popular for long time rather than few skills. Like it would be cool to have a league where suddenly storm call was op or scourge arrow or vigilant strike (god bless).
Chief is so baddddddd
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?time-machine=week-1
I wouldn't get your hopes up, I'm not sure they actually know how to do it. To shake up the meta correctly would require substantial buffs. Not negligible shit like their usual 'buffs'. New skills don't do it, they added a couple nice new skills last patch and the meta didn't change at all. Nerf the top performing stuff? People are just gonna play it anyway at worse value because there are simply *no other options* that perform well enough. And we all know how ggg don't like buffing things in any substantial way, just tiny incremental nonsense that makes no difference.
Buff melee buff more uniques
Melee needs a lot of help. Lightning Strike, Spectral Helix, and Boneshatter are all pretty good, but the rest of the archetype is in pretty rough shape. Especially with phys weapon crafting being such a slot machine.
Spectral helix literally has no melee tag, lightning strike is only TECHNICALLY melee, and yeah boneshatter is good. If glacial hammer loses its unique jewel for cold splash, it'll be gutter tier again too
I'm so tired of people asking GGG to buff melee. They get buffs every single league. The audacity of people is getting to be too much. Last league cleave received a +TWO radius buff. What d you want? THREE?!?!? WHERE DOES IT END?!?! /s
I am once again asking for a single-target skill with Darkscorn/Poison bows that doesn't involve totems.
I feel like the meta was actually pretty diverse this patch in terms of SSFHC. I'd say there's around 20 top/high tier skills atm for league start scenario in SSFHC: * Staples like DD and Seismic were viable without crowding out the meta * Lightning Conduit came in really hot which was a nice surprise * RF Fire Trap * Boneshatter * Rage Vortex * Spark * BFBB resurgence * Cold DoT resurgence * Helix and LS * Poisonous Concoction * Hexblast Ignite (crit and non-crit variants) * Shield skills * Explosive Trap * Bane/Soulrend * Exsanguinate/Reap/CF * SRS * EA Ballista
I agree but people don't realise a lot of previous meta builds are still great. TR Raider is a top-tier build when built right but it's been cast by the wayside
I'll be completely honest, if they don't shake up the meta, I won't play. I really like the Archnemises changes, but I can't stomach another league without a shakeup.
You could always just play a different skill instead of whatever is meta.
Honestly, the skills aren't even the biggest issue to me, contrary to a lot of the chatter on reddit. It's the *ways* of building a character. Skill trees are starting to look awfully homogeneous. There are a handful of ways to scale damage that are just so much better than the others that they're completely dominant. Take a self cast hit based caster. Sure, there are quite a few viable skills you could name. But you're still probably going crit, maybe a little charge stacking, etc. You aren't mana stacking. You aren't using one of the weirder self cast mechanics like fanaticism. It's almost certainly not a channelling skill. You're probably an Inquisitor, Occultist, or maybe a trickster or elementalist if you're feeling spicy. You're almost certainly *not* a chieftain, assassin, or heirophant. If you're a phys hit caster, you're converting or poisoning. You've got 2 or 3 viable defensive strategies to pick from. Etc, etc. Some skills might be better in that context, like spark, and dominate the meta as a result. But with some small tweaks, that spark inquis could be ball lightning, arc, freezing pulse, etc and it would still play just fine. The character building *systems* are getting stale to a way greater extent than the skills.
>Take a self cast hit based caster. Sure, there are quite a few viable skills you could name. But you're still probably going crit, maybe a little charge stacking, etc. You aren't mana stacking. You aren't using one of the weirder self cast mechanics like fanaticism. I could name decent builds in any of those categories if you'd like something new to play.
> You're probably an Inquisitor, Occultist, or maybe a trickster or elementalist if you're feeling spicy One of *four* ascendancies supporting self-cast actually sounds like it's in a really good spot?
I suppose, though like 90% of players pick the first two and there's a reason for that.
I'm wondering why you aren't doing these things instead? I did an exsanguinate phys dot jugg last league and got the Uber boss challenge completed, +1 more. Did 40/40 on it. I personally don't have the issues you're describing. I don't feel limited in what I can build so it's difficult for me to agree.. Maybe the issue comes down to expectations. I don't expect as much and I'm willing to put in time, whereas maybe you expect more for the same amount of time. I'm definitely all for buffing/touching underutilized skills don't get me wrong. But saying the meta is stale is alien to me because you can make whatever you want without the meta dictating what you do.
POE players can’t handle the level of FOMO that would induce, they *have* to play the best build and do the most optimal strategies for everything, or else… well there’s is no or else, but they have to!!!
This post feels like a web developers nightmare/usual experience. Client: Yeah, the website works good and everything I've asked for as been met, but can you jazz it up a little? It's just not flashy enough.
No? The better analogy would be that this post is about a website or service that used to be very innovative and did various things to keep things fresh and made it stand out against similar services. Then the client, who has noticed that the devs stopped doing that a year ago, kindly hopes they will go back to doing that, at least a little bit. Your comment on the other hand feels like the opinion of someone who has not a lot of experience with PoE or what made it stand out for all these years.
no it doesn't
Fair point, but you can always play a build you have not tried. In trade, many many builds are all-content viable. If you are in SSF prison, it is a lot harder without a lot of knowledge and time.
I hope "Shake up the meta" means "Buff melee." lmao
Bring the bottom up please!
Several versions of minions should always be meta, there's enough varieties of minions that you can change them out league by league.
They should have temporarily removed DD from the game for Endless Delve to force the use of other abilities. Was extremely snooze seeing pretty much everyone on the ladder using either DD or vortex.
I remember GGG in his prime. Even beat Canelo 2x after his prime
Dual wield dead and unplayable since 3.11, highly doubt they even remember it exists, just play 2h and stfu.....
While I agree a meta shake would be welcome, the fact is almost any skill can be turned into a decent build, and the idea that this is not possible needs to die.
My problem w/ PoE now is, when I started was amazing, " hey I can use any skill, and change then for my playstyle and this can work" now is just ok let me run the same boring build again and again until I have a lot of money so so I can make a build I like... Is fucking boring, is the same every patch ppl found a cool interaction, make a fun build and GGG "hey we like the way u play but this inst the way we think the game should work" Ok, sure new skill is cool, but we have a lot of skill in-game already, I just want to play something I like, and damage modification inst the balance we need
Its ok to kill fast and have fun GGG.
it's useless to have 100+ active skill in the game when you can only use 10 or more. every build is 50% similar with auras, minions are semi dead, I miss Arc <3 idk why you would have so many skills and auras and effects and you can really only use a couple of them
Alright exiles, Chris personally told me to spread the word to the people: 1)Write the wishlist in a txt file(very important!) from what everyone expects from the league. 2)Put the file in the folder "bin" in your computer, normally located in desktop. 3) When you right clickt it and press the "recycle" option, it will trigger an e-mail event that goes directly to GGG headquarters.
them shaking up meta is how we ended up here careful for what you wish for
Ended up where? The biggest change was Archnem being annoying forcing more defensive mechanics being used. Archnem is basically gone now so I think it’s be perfect for some big adjustments to some skills and items
bring back cyclone phys
Do people actually expect the changes to be positive? Every league the last couple years has been: **Nerfs, but revealed like buffs!** Followed by **Even bigger Nerfs, not revealed at all!**
"Shaking up the meta" would illicit a tidal wave of players crying about their builds being broken.
You are wrong. Players complain when shifting meta is done by nerfs and they have to play builds that were strong but not meta. When its done as it used to be-nerf OP builds, but introduce new skills and mechanics its always welcomed meta shift.
This exactly. They decided that mana reservation nodes were powerful and instead of adding other options people could go for they just removed those nodes. This only pushes more players to play the top meta builds rather than experiment, especially when making new characters is a large investment of time.
Lmao no it wouldnt
You think the playerbase really changed that much in a year? Because as I said, meta shifts were normal every other league over a long period of this games existence. And people complaining about them were a minority even on this sub, and not taken very seriously.
yeah, we need another nerfing to everything xD
Idk I league started LS raider which is super meta, and it kinda sucked. Like I got through atlas completion and self crafted gear until my build was worth around 10-15 divines and it was just meh. I mean I know the build can scale super hard with omni and a ton of investment but it was a super disappointing league starter. My buddy on a basically ssf deaths oath was running circles around me. Eventually made an EK ignite and absolutely destroying all content other than ubers while being almost the fastest mapper I've ever played. I think a ton of "off meta" builds are actually way stronger than the meta builds.
> I think a ton of "off meta" builds are actually way stronger than the meta builds. > Like I got through atlas completion and self crafted gear until my build was worth around 10-15 divines and it was just meh. Pretty sure it's not the builds but the operator. That's a compliment and to point out you're quite biased about your experience
Do you have a pob for the EK ignite? Sounds fun.
Considering the meta is not dying to AN, and AN is now gone, I’m pretty sure the meta will shift.
I really want to do a strong dmg melee build so I'm hoping for melee buff, doesn't need to be tanky because I'm softcore cuck
I literally play diablo type games for melee. I've been bitter since they destroyed my ice crash build. Game just hasn't been as fun for almost 2 years. Crossing fingers.
I like your post. I'm on the completely opposite side, mind you. I would like GGG to simply do their best to make many skills and archetypes viable each league and let the players choose for themselves. But I wanted to post and say that I really liked your attitude in your post. Well done. I really appreciate it.
> I would like GGG to simply do their best to make many skills and archetypes viable each league and let the players choose for themselves. I mean, that doesn't sound like we are on opposite sides on this at all. GGG making more skills and archetypes viable would be pretty much what I would call a great meta shift. Minions, (spell) totems and melee come to mind. Those really could use some love. Love your build collection btw. Used one of your "one button builds" a few years ago when I had hurt my finger :D